The present text has as a main goal to discuss the relations between childhood and contemporary culture. More so, that the social space the children occupy in the cyberculture became a very contradictory one: for in one hand we see such children with a natural inborne expertise; and on the other hand, we see them as unprotected and fragile beings. The line of reasoning we intend to partake with the reader, begins initially with the data research of the (...) production of arguments on the children´s relations with the internet that go around their daily routine and the researches of academical and official nature. On a second instance, we look into the market´s discursive production in order to observe how the making of sites, targeted speciffically to childrens, relates itself with prerrogatives of such specialized knowledge. At last but not at least, we show a philosophical approach of such speeches sustained metaforically by the homeric narrative and Franz Kafka’s reading of Ulisses’encounter at the mermaid’s island. Through this path we intend to analyze tendencies that emerge from the production of knowledge about childhood and cyberculture and, altogether, to think on the ethical and methodological chalenges that such subject imposes to childhood’s researchers. (shrink)

Early Childhood and Neuroscience is a practical guide to understanding the complex and challenging subject of neuroscience and its use (and misapplication) in early childhood policy and practice. The 2nd edition has been updated throughout and includes three new chapters on: - the effects of childhood trauma - school readiness - neurodiversity It also includes a new Foreword by Laura Jana (Penn State University, USA). The book provides a balanced overview of the debates by weaving discussion on (...) the opportunities of using neuroscience in early childhood practice with examination of the limitations and ethical implications throughout the chapters. This enables students to inform their own opinions about the discipline and its use in their future practice. Clear explanations of the main terms and theories are complemented with illustrative case studies of cutting-edge research from around the world, a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading. Reflective discussion questions give students the chance to apply their theoretical knowledge to real-world contexts. (shrink)

Amongst the many social factors that impact upon children, race is arguably one of the largest. Race is an ever-present social category that governs many elements of a child’s interaction with others, and especially for racial minority children it exerts a deep influence on their understanding of themselves. In this chapter, we shall begin by examining what the concept of race really amounts to, emphasizing its status as a socially constructed concept, before examining in the following section how children first (...) come to recognize the existence of race, and to understand their own racial identity.We will then look at two important areas that illustrate the profound impact that the social presence of race and the child’s developing understanding of racial identity have upon the social conditions of many children. First, we will examine how race and childhood intersect in matters of educational opportunity and achievement, before moving on to examine the issue of transracial adoption in the final section. (shrink)

In this paper we explore a new way to deal with social inequality and injustice in an educational way. We do so by offering a particular reading of a scene taken from Minnelli's film The Band Wagon which is often regarded as overly western-centred and racist. We argue, however, that the way in which words and movements in this scene function are expressive of an event that can be read as a new beginning and that it is for this reason (...) in and of itself educational. By drawing on Agamben's and Cavell's insights on childhood and what it means to acquire a language, we argue that in this scene a form of childhood is displayed which denotes a general condition for education to take place in children and grown-ups alike. Hence, education can be understood as a interruption of existing power structures and as a transformation of one's existence. (shrink)

The evolution of modern human life history has involved substantial changes in the overall length of the subadult period, the introduction of a novel early childhood stage, and many changes in the initiation, termination, and character of the other stages. The fossil record is explored for evidence of this evolutionary process, with a special emphasis on middle childhood, which many argue is equivalent to the juvenile stage of African apes. Although the “juvenile” and “middle childhood” stages appear (...) to be the same from a broad comparative perspective, in that they begin with the eruption of the first molar and the achievement of the majority of adult brain size and end with sexual maturity, the detailed differences in the expression of these two stages, and how they relate to the preceding and following stages, suggest that a distinction should be maintained between them to avoid blurring subtle, but important, differences. (shrink)

The theme of childhood and education in Lyotard’s philosophy provides an interesting field of reflection combining education studies and continental philosophy. Childhood in Lyotard’s thought is mostly understood as infantia, a concept that appears towards the end of his work. The claim of this article is that childhood in Lyotard’s philosophy cannot be reduced to the late concept of infantia; looking at the recurring nature of this theme in his writings that is present from the beginning, as (...) well as various figures under which it appears, pushes Lyotard’s readers to reconsider his work from a pluralist and interdisciplinary perspective. (shrink)

This book is an interdisciplinary exploration of the notion of childhood and its place in philosophical education. Childhood is not seen as a developmental state that needs to be overcome, but rather an existential state that constitutes a significant part of being human as well as the (forgotten) dimension of the world itself.

This, the book shows, has radical implications, particularly for the question of how we seek to educate children. One Aristotelian legacy is the unquestioned belief that societies must educate the young irrespective of the latter's wishes.

This book opens the door to the effects of intellectual, educational, and economic colonization of young children throughout the world. Using a postcolonial lens on current educational practices, the authors hope to lift those practices out of reproducing traditional power structures and push our thinking beyond the adult/child dichotomy into new possibilities for the lives that are created with children.

From growth attenuation therapy for severely developmentally disabled children to the post-natal management of infants with trisomy 13 and 18, pediatric treatment decisions regularly involve assessments of the probability and severity of a child’s disability. Because these decisions are almost always made by surrogate decision-makers and because these decision-makers must often make decisions based on both prognostic guesses and potentially biased quality of life judgments, they are among the most ethically complex in pediatric care. As the introduction to HEC Forum’s (...) special thematic issue on Childhood and Disability, this article orients the reader to the history of bioethics’ relationship to both pediatric ethics and disability studies and introduces the issue’s five manuscripts. As clinicians, disability scholars, philosophers and clinical ethicists writing on various aspects of pediatric disability, the articles’ authors all invite readers to dig beneath an overly-simplified version of what disability might mean to children and families and instead embrace a posture of genuine humility, recognizing both the limits and harms of traditional medical and bioethical responses to the disabled child. (shrink)

I distinguish between three different ideas that have been recently discussed under the heading of 'the intrinsic goods of childhood': that childhood is itself intrinsically valuable, that certain goods are valuable only for children, and that children are being owed other goods than adults. I then briefly defend the claim the childhood is intrinsically good. Most of the chapter is dedicated to the analysis, and rejection, of the claim that certain goods are valuable only for children. This (...) has implications about how a good society should trade off economic productivity on the one hand and goods such as play and unstructured time on the other hand. (shrink)

Stories do not fossilize. Thus, exploring tales shared during prehistory, the longest part of human history inevitably becomes speculative. Nevertheless, various attempts have been made to find a more scientifically valid way into our deep human past of storytelling. Following the social brain hypothesis, we suggest including into the theory of human storytelling more fine-grained and evidence-based findings about the manifold exaptation and adaptation, genetic changes, and phenotypic plasticity in the deep human past, which all shaped the emergence of storytelling (...) in hominins. We identify three preconditions for humans sharing stories: first, the long evolution of language in the different taxa as one of the preconditions of ostensive signaling; second, the pivotal role of childhood in the evolution of collaborative intentionality; and third, the role of fireside chats in the rise of elaborative sharing of stories. We propose that humans, albeit perhaps no other hominins learned to understand others through sharing stories, not only as intentional agents, but also as mental ones. (shrink)

Human life history incorporates childhood, a lengthy post-weaning period of dependency. This species-specific period provides an opportunity for extensive learning and for sophisticated cultural behaviors to develop, including crucial tool use skills. Although I agree that no individual cognitive trait singularly differentiates humans from other animals, I suggest here that without childhood, the traits that are key to human tool use would not emerge.

Kline presents an excellent synthesis of teaching theory and research, with cogent arguments regarding its prevalence. In this, she claims that “active teaching” is human specific, and presents tangible reasons why. But in doing so, she overlooks a critical aspect of the human condition that may have arisen only recently in our evolutionary history: Childhood as a life stage.

Childhood looms large in our understanding of human life as it is a phase through which all adults have passed. Childhood is foundational to the development of selfhood, the formation of interests, values and skills and to the lifespan as a whole. Understanding what it is like to be a child, and what differences childhood makes, are essential for any broader understanding of the human condition. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children is (...) an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into five parts: ¿ Being a child ¿ Childhood and moral status ¿ Parents and children ¿ Children in society ¿ Children and the state. Questions covered include: What is a child? Is childhood a uniquely valuable state, and if so why? Can we generalize about the goods of childhood? What rights do children have, and are they different from adults¿ rights? What gives people a right to parent? What role, if any, ought biology to play in determining who has the right to parent a particular child? What kind of rights can parents legitimately exercise over their children? What roles do relationships with siblings and friends play in the shaping of childhoods? How should we think about sexuality and disabilility in childhood, and about racialised children? How should society manage the education of children, and what values should inform such practices? What is a good school? How are children¿s lives affected by being taken into social care? The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of childhood, political philosophy and ethics as well as those in related disciplines such as education, psychology, sociology, social policy, law, social work, youth work, neuroscience and anthropology. (shrink)

In this book, the author defends the substantial unity of a human person whose life endures through time. Because a human being is an irreducible whole (including biological, psychological, and narrative powers), our lives can have personal coherence over time. The whole temporal expanse of a life is prior to any of its stages, just as a whole human person is prior to any of her organs or powers. We can tell stories about our past, present, and future only because (...) we possess a certain kind of complex unity at any one time. What we are as human beings makes it possible for us to lead the life of a human person. (shrink)

Functions and objectives serve as an incentive for children living in Brazil to question their role as a child in society.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Platonic description of the cognitive development of the human being is a crucial part of his philosophy. This account emphasizes not only the existence of phases of rational growth but also the need that the cognitive progress of the individuals is investigated further. I will reconstruct what rational growth is for Plato in light of the deliberate choice of the philosopher to leave incomplete his schematization of human intellectual development. I will argue that this is a means chosen by (...) Plato to stimulate his readers to use his text as a starting point for an enquiry into the capabilities of human intellection. I will illustrate the presence of two phases in the process of human rational growth, highlighting the different techniques utilized by Plato to promote cognitive development during each of them. When the individuals are in the first phase of intellectual growth, they are rationally stimulated via conventional discursive material transmitted in written form. Human rational progress at the level of sophistication of theoretical adulthood is promoted through mathematics. (shrink)

A survey of university students tested whether committing animal abuse during childhood was related to approval of interpersonal violence against children and women in families. Respondents who had abused an animal as children or adolescents were significantly more likely to support corporal punishment, even after controlling for frequency of childhood spanking, race, biblical literalism, and gender. Those who had perpetrated animal abuse were also more likely to approve of a husband slapping his wife. Engaging in childhood violence (...) against less powerful beings— animals—may generalize to the acceptance of violence against less powerful members of families and society—women and children. This paper discusses the implications of this process. (shrink)

Philosophy for Children has long been considered as crucial for children’s ethical and moral education and a decisive contribution for education for the democratic life. The book gathers contributions from experts in the field who reflect on fundamental issues on how childhood and ethics are interrelated within the P4C movement. The main interest of this volume is to offer an understanding of how different philosophical conceptions of childhood can be coordinated with different ethical and meta-ethical philosophical considerations in (...) P4C addressing topics such as P4C and relativism, P4C and Virtue ethics, ethics and emotions in P4C, philosophical commitments and P4C application, and Socratic practice within a pragmatist framework. A thought-provoking collection about how assumptions of particular philosophical conceptions of childhood modify moral and ethical education and a testimony of the undeniable contribution of P4C for moral education and reconceptualization of childhood. (shrink)

To improve upon previous methodology, participants in musically induced happy, sad, or neutral moods were asked to recall childhood and recent autobiographical memories in response to pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral word cues. Symmetrical mood-congruent memory effects were observed when events were rated from the perspective of when they actually occurred (i.e., then), because memories rated as being unpleasant then tended to be rated as more pleasant now. Finally, pleasant and unpleasant cue words facilitated retrieval of childhood memories more (...) than did neutral cues. These findings suggest that symmetrical mood congruence can be observed when accounting for such factors as the valence of retrieval cues and the perspective from which experiences are rated, given that memories appear to undergo change in affective labelling. (shrink)

Locke & Bogin (L&B) propose that humans are unique in possessing stages of childhood and adolescence. Arguments to the contrary include evidence for a similar and adaptive juvenile period in simians of slow growth, intense play and learning, and provisioning with solid food by adults. Likewise, simians as well as humans undergo a compensatory growth spurt during puberty.

What challenges does the political participation of children pose to the Philosophy of Childhood? What challenges does the Philosophy of Childhood pose to children's political participation? This text is inspired by the idea that “research is not about enumerating situations, but making researchers lose their sleep”. It is divided into two distinct parts. In the first, we introduce the theoretical framework that orients our research group and our work with children in the philosophical research community. We posit a (...) link between listening to children's voices, the conditions of listening, and the location of their political participation in public space. The second part is comprised of a creative illustrated narrative in the form of a dialogue. From the coast of what could be called the territory of political participation, two characters - Sentinel and Walker - discuss the waves of children that crash onto the territory. To what extent does creating space and time for listening to children open polyphonic movements and enable the construction of new forms of polis: poly(s)phonies? In what ways does the Philosophy of Childhood challenge itself in the creation of poly(s)phonies where the participation of children sets the tone? In what ways does the Philosophy of Childhood in turn challenge us to create poly(s)phonies? (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: Early-emerging, temperamental differences in fear-related traits may be a heritable vulnerability factor for anxiety disorders. Previous research indicates that the serotonin transporter promoter region polymorphism is a candidate gene for such traits. METHODS: Associations between 5-HTTLPR genotype and indices of fearful child temperament, derived from maternal report and standardized laboratory observations, were examined in a community sample of 95 preschool-aged children. RESULTS: Children with one or more long alleles of the 5-HTTLPR gene were rated as significantly more nervous during (...) standardized laboratory tasks than children who were homozygous for the short alleles. Children homozygous for the short alleles were also rated as significantly shyer, by maternal report, than those with at least one copy of the long allele of the 5-HTTLPR gene. CONCLUSIONS: This study extends the literature linking the short alleles of the serotonin transporter promoter region polymorphism to fear and anxiety-related traits in early childhood and adulthood, and is one of very few studies to examine the molecular genetics of preschoolers' temperament using multiple measures of traits in a normative sample. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to assess the links between religious discrimination and developmental and contextual variables. Based on the assumption that discrimination results from the interplay of prejudice and moral thinking, discriminatory behaviour was hypothesised to be linked to age, school environment, minority or majority group membership, and parental religious socialisation practices. The results indicate that discrimination is more frequent during childhood than during pre-adolescence or adolescence, more common in homogeneous schools than in heterogeneous schools, and more (...) likely when parents frequently express messages promoting mistrust of other religious groups. Participants from the minority group were more likely to discriminate against their own ingroup than were those from the majority group. Further studies are needed to determine whether these links are correlative or predictive, and to understand the underlying processes of religious discrimination. (shrink)

It is difficult to find just one place to look for children and childhood in the American philosopher John Dewey’s work. This is not because he uses the terms so often, but because the concept of childhood pervades his opus in and through another set of terms—development, growth, experience, plasticity, habit, impulse, and education. In Dewey’s language, none of these terms mean quite what they mean in other thinkers’ language, and especially not in the language of the human (...) development theorists of the early twentieth century and after, who based their thinking on a monological, unidirectional developmental trajectory that could be applied at all levels of the evolutionary continuum. Dewey is an interactionist through and through, and thus all his terms should be understood as dialectical. He does not invoke the concept “child” without invoking the concept “adult,” nor does he describe anything that does not have a normative dimension, which by definition belies “pure” description. His is a language of possibility, and the limits of human possibility are incalculable. This is why the concept of childhood is so important in his work. In this text we present selections from two works, the first emerging at the sickening epicenter of the Great War, in 1916—a war in which youth was sacrificed to what he calls adult “infantilisms” on a historically unprecedented scale, and a war that, arguably, effectively suppressed the educational possibilities his work represents for the rest of the century. Democracy and Education is his magnum opus on education, and characteristically both garrulous and brilliantly pointed, maddeningly oblique and trenchantly critical, painfully dull and fitfully enthralling, explicitly conservative and implicitly radical. The next selections are from Human Nature and Conduct , published in 1922, when the orgiastic death-feast of the tyrants, the politicians, and their hosts of blind acolytes was over. (shrink)

Foregrounds the importance of arts education to children's development and learning.